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Each week, The Athletic asks the same 12 questions to a different race car driver. Up next: Joe Gibbs Racing driver Martin Truex Jr., a New Jersey native who returns to his home track of Dover Motor Speedway this week as the defending race winner. This interview has been edited for clarity, but the full version is available on the 12 Questions podcast.
1. What is currently the No. 1 thing on your bucket list?
Another championship. Get that done and get the hell out of here. (Laughs)
We talked about this a little bit last year, but is there any way you could do a mic drop? Like even if you already told them you were coming back, could you legitimately walk away if you won in November?
I mean, sitting here right now? I would say yeah, I think I could. But I don’t know in the moment. It’s going to be harder to stop doing this than I think. I’m not real good at thinking about those big decisions or making them, that’s for sure. I just go spur of the moment. Whatever I’m feeling at that time, I’ll just kind of wing it.
So on the championship stage …
It’s possible. It is possible.
2. How much media coverage of NASCAR do you consume?
Not much at all. When I leave the track, I leave the track. I do Monday meetings, and then I’m like checked out until Friday. If you’re gonna do it this long, you’ve got to have stuff away from the track to keep your mental health … and just stay enjoying life and stay hungry and stay excited and fired up and motivated when you get to the track. So that helps me at least, to get away and go do some fun stuff.
3. Beyond winning, what is the best way to measure success in racing?
These days, everything we do is just so criticized and studied. The data and everything is under a microscope. It’s like, “You sucked on pit road today, you were two-tenths slower than everyone.” It’s like everything, every year, gets more difficult. And that’s the toughest thing about the sport now is; it’s doing all those little things right. Sometimes I think the best races I’ve ever driven don’t always have to be a win. Sometimes you have a 10th-place car and you run fourth with it and you didn’t make any mistakes all day and you drove a really good race. So that’s how you measure yourself anymore — if your team is happy with the job you’re doing, usually you’re doing a pretty good job, because — especially mine — they’re pretty critical.
I can imagine there’s not one thing you do now in any way — even turning the wheel the slightest bit — where they don’t know what you’re doing in the car.
Correct. And nobody does everything perfect. So we all always have room to get better.
4. What is an opinion you have about NASCAR you don’t think is shared by the fans?
Something people don’t understand is it’s not all the glitz and glamour. And it’s not all as incredibly awesome as everybody thinks it is to be a driver. It’s a lot of work. It’s stressful. It’s tough. You’re under a microscope all the time. Everyone’s like, “Oh man, it’s so awesome. You get to drive a race car every weekend for a living.” I’m like, “Yeah, well, there’s a lot more that goes into it than that.” So maybe just the misunderstanding about the job and how much it takes to do it and be good at it.
5. Well, you answered my next question, which was “What is the biggest thing fans don’t realize about what you do for a living?” But you just checked the box on that.
Checked! Killed two birds with one stone.
6. This next one is about something current related to yourself. You’re now the oldest driver in the series … (Truex turns 44 in June).
Full-time.
Yeah, I guess Jimmie Johnson is older (48) when he runs his races part-time.
And J.J. (Yeley, who is 47).
You’ve done your research here.
I’ve got to keep up with who is older than me now, because there aren’t many! (Laughs)
If a younger driver came up to you and said, “What was it like racing when NASCAR was at its peak with the massive crowds?” What do you tell them about those memories you have?
It was a pain in the ass to get to the airport after the race. (Laughs) And you didn’t really want to leave the track on Saturdays before or after the Xfinity races or anything. And then on Sundays, you didn’t want to go outside the track at all. It was nuts. Traffic all the time. That was the biggest thing I remember.
Yeah, I remember even seven hours before the race.
I remember my dad coming to a race, and he’d be getting there at like eight in the morning and he’s like, “Oh my God, it took us two hours to get in from down the street.” That was the norm back then. And now we every once in awhile, we’ll get a little bit of traffic after the race. But generally speaking, it’s all pretty calm and simple these days.
7. This is a wild-card question. As long as I’ve been covering NASCAR, I still don’t understand what drivers lose when they get older. When I was younger, being in my 40s sounded old to me and I figured I was going to be sore all the time or not have as much energy. But I don’t feel that much different or anything. So what about you? Does it hurt more if you have a wreck? Are you more sore? Has anything changed from your younger days, from what you recall?
Knock on wood, no. It’s just different for everyone, right? Mark Martin raced and could have won until he was (54) and probably could have still done it after that. And then there are guys who maybe weren’t as sharp when they got in their 40s or whatever. Or maybe they felt things that (made them feel) like they were slipping. Maybe they were getting tired. Maybe they were sore or had issues.
I’ve had a few issues over the years here and there, but generally speaking, I still feel great. When I get out after a race and I look at these young guys falling on the ground, I’m like, “I’m doing pretty good.” Never really had any issues, knock on wood again. I feel like I’m the best I’ve ever been — in the car, during the race, after the race, all the things it takes — and I feel like I’m as sharp as ever. They say you know when you lose a step, but hopefully it’ll be a little while.
8. What do you like about the place you grew up? Mayetta, New Jersey.
I love everything about it. The things I love to do are all there. I grew up by the shore, so you go fishing and you go to the beach. You could either go saltwater fishing out in the ocean or you had the bay, which we did a lot of fun stuff there. My parents’ house was just a few miles from the water. And then I could go out the back door and go hunt.
Jersey in general gets a bad reputation, but that’s kind of, like, North Jersey that sucks. … Crowded, dirty, smelly, all that. And then South Jersey is just beautiful and laid back. Totally different than the stereotype.
I’ve been spending quite a bit of time there the past few years, back to my roots. Now that I’ve established myself in racing and I don’t have to be in NASCAR country (North Carolina) five days during the week, I can slip away. That’s been awesome, and I’ve been enjoying hanging out with my friends and my family more and fishing and stuff like that I grew up doing. It’s been fun seeing the old stomping grounds a lot.
“It’s going to be harder to stop doing this than I think,” Martin Truex Jr. says of his eventual retirement. “… Whatever I’m feeling at that time, I’ll just kind of wing it.” (Jonathan Bachman / Getty Images)
9. What personality traits are you the most proud of?
I try not to think about these things. I feel like I’m a nice person for the most part. We all have our days and things that set us off, but I feel like overall, I’m a good person, a good guy. And I try to do things right.
10. Which driver would you least like to be stuck with on an elevator?
I gotta be honest with you: I don’t really want to spend any time stuck with most of them. There’s a few I probably wouldn’t mind, but the rest of them, I’d be like, “Yeah, whatever. I’m not even going to talk to you anyway.” So I don’t have one who stands out for any reason, but most of them.
Chase Briscoe picked you because he said he’s never talked to you before, so he just wouldn’t know what to talk about.
I can see that. Yep. (Laughs)
11. What is a run-in you’ve had with a driver that TV or the media missed?
Stuff happens all the time they miss on the track. … It could be 50 different things in a race and TV can’t see it all. We’re always flipping each other off and pissed off at each other, and we don’t say nothing or do nothing. Nobody knows but the two drivers that it happened to, usually.
12. Each week, I ask a driver to give me a question for the next person. Last week was Todd Gilliland, and he just wants to know more about your fishing. Where is your favorite spot to go and where would we find you in your preferred destination?
I don’t really have favorites. I get asked a lot of questions at (appearances) like, “What’s your favorite this? What’s your favorite that? What’s your favorite track?” I am terrible at picking favorites. I don’t have a favorite band. I don’t have a favorite movie. I don’t have a favorite fishing spot. I have a lot of spots I really like to go to, and I try to get to them every year.
A couple I try to do every year would be freshwater Northern Michigan in the summer and saltwater stuff in New Jersey, where I grew up. The tuna fishing there the last couple years has been insane. So I’m looking forward to that coming up in a few months. And I’ve got my annual hunting trip to places I like to go. I hit Missouri every year, I hit Illinois every year, and I hit Ohio every year. All those are kind of my favorite places.
So is it weather-dependent or season-dependent … ?
Weather, seasons, where the fish are. Like you can’t catch tuna in New Jersey right now, but in three months, they’ll be everywhere.
Oh. Sorry, but I don’t understand.
Fish migrate. Like striped bass season — they spend the winter down in North Carolina and in the south a bit, and then the summer they go north. You can catch them all the way up through the cape and places like that. So fish migrate and you have to chase them around.
Huh. I didn’t know that.
I feel like I was kind of rude about that, like everybody should know that. It’s not like lake fishing where they’re stuck, right? Tuna could go from Canada to past the Bahamas in two months or a month. It’s amazing to see how much ground they cover.
The next interview is with Parker Kligerman. Do you have a question I can ask him?
Ask him how close he thinks his team is to winning. And where does he feel his best chance is coming up?
GO DEEPER
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(Top photo of Martin Truex Jr. last month in Bristol, Tenn.: Meg Oliphant / Getty Images)
